Archive for January, 2023

The butterfly awing

Today, the felt sense of my reading and writing have been peaceful, a calm readying with a reaching out. The quality question is the butterfly awing.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on January 31st, 2023 | No Comments »

What’s the quality?

What is the quality of our communication?

I like that quality question. First I liked it to describe the work of the communications committee of Friends. It gives serious concerned spirituality and reach to our work. Second, I like it as a question for us to ask one another in our daily converse: we can weigh, mark, and value—not just evaluate—our meeting and conversing.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on January 31st, 2023 | No Comments »

your right to be the world

I have as much right to be the world as every other being. I also have the responsibility to do so.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on January 31st, 2023 | No Comments »

Mirror and thesaurus

Mirror and thesaurus are good tools for me to be in conversation: Mirror back to a person her last 4 or 5 words, and she will often tell you more. Saying “It sounds like” or “you seem to be” fine tunes your hearing for just now.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on January 31st, 2023 | No Comments »

Meaning is a lazy word

Meaning may often be a lazy word for, or unveil, motivation.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on January 31st, 2023 | No Comments »

60-second writings

Write a distinct piece, beginning, middle, and end, in 60 seconds. Find each word’s weight, texture, color.

I am not sure there is much value to me in sixty-second writings: I do not like the pressure element. On the other hand, it is a chute that can pinpoint my mind. Will it convince others? That may not be its purpose or main worth—which may lie in wait for me.

Story was the easiest way to do that. What of description or persuasion? What of haiku?

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on January 30th, 2023 | No Comments »

Would not yield to me

That piece (on betweens) would not yield to me, to my pen. Could it be that if I gave myself a game with a restraining rule or two, it would give up its profundity and vigor? Write it like a roadmap, or a cartoon? Make it a pair of reading glasses? Pick a book title from a list? Throw an obstacle, a maze.

Second rule: tell it slant. Never use the word between.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on January 30th, 2023 | No Comments »

Steep awhile

This is important. Steep awhile here.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on January 30th, 2023 | No Comments »

Dream time Finnegans

What are the rules of dream time as in Finnegans Wake?

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on January 30th, 2023 | No Comments »

The hearer of moire

The teller draws out, educes, from the hearer something she knows. But also more, for our hearer assimilates what the teller wishes, and accommodates herself to the outside pattern coming from him, shifts the pattern to say music. Making speaks to sensing, sensing bends speaking in response. From whence the patterns of a moiré?

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on January 29th, 2023 | No Comments »

Gate of silence

Let us enter a space set aside through the gate of silence.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on January 29th, 2023 | No Comments »

Temenos: two clear glasses

What might we do to create a bounded sacred space for our conversation, a temenos? Here exceptional events might freely happen. Light a candle, turn down the outside light? Remove the cell phones? Clear the space? Remove the table or sit back from it? Set out two plain clear glasses of water and see into them? Call in the sacred, the set apart, the silent? Tune attention? Attend body and breath, stomach, legs and fingers?

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on January 29th, 2023 | No Comments »

Try nonsense conversations

Try nonsense conversations: speak in sing-song gibberish. A child learning his toes, play with your verbal instrument for tone, volume, speed, rhythm, percussion, intent, friendliness, animosity, anger, calm, enunciation, impeccability. . . .

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on January 29th, 2023 | No Comments »

Focus on pathology?

Why is the focus of focusing on pathology? Can it be applied to expand imagination or spirituality? Could it develop conversations and meetings?

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on January 29th, 2023 | No Comments »

What are your moves?

What are the physical and spiritual moves of good conversation? What gestures of face and stomach and wayward feet steel your talking, steal your hearing?

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on January 28th, 2023 | No Comments »

Stopped and stared

In Nachmanovitch’s Free Play last evening I ran across the notion that the purpose of literature is not to prove nor sell but to invite thinking. I stopped running and stared. Yes! That is what I have been about in this book. To vex people into thinking. Together.

Thus, having written it is enough. It is play, and that is its purpose.

Is it to be lasting? What lasts? Nothing forever. What did the cave painters communicate? But they do speak to us. There is a thread.

Threads are pregnant. We are their children. Gestating.

Play with me. Think.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on January 28th, 2023 | No Comments »

Not teaching:

We’re not teaching. We’re calling forth.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on January 28th, 2023 | No Comments »

Useless sieve

Conversing, like play, is useless. Only after, we might sieve its use, that is when our conversing becomes an It.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on January 28th, 2023 | No Comments »

Footprints in the Windsm # 2202–My Sisyphus activities

Footprints in the Windsm # 2202

This morning I described my place in life as being done with my Sisyphus activities—no longer pushing a new snowball uphill each morning. Ha! Sometimes it gets large quickly and becomes near impossible to get it to the top. Sometimes it melts before it starts, with same result: it doesn’t make it to the top!


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Published in: FootprintsintheWind/sm | on January 28th, 2023 | No Comments »

That I play

I play that I play. I play there in converse that I play there.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on January 28th, 2023 | No Comments »

Unmindful

Canst thou converse unmindful of past or future, unmindful of gain or loss, unmindful? Then thou canst enter converse.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on January 27th, 2023 | No Comments »

Must disappear

For meaningful conversation to emerge I and Thou must disappear.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on January 27th, 2023 | No Comments »

To tease

Conversation’s task: to tease two Thous from a state of not being able to play to a state of play.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on January 27th, 2023 | No Comments »
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